screenwriting / playwriting: page 2

_
_ The power of myth permeated the original "Star Wars" (1977), and not by accident.

George Lucas credited the late mythologist Joseph Campbell as a major inspiration for characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, and even invited Campbell, an academic and writer, to a special screening to view the "Stars Wars" trilogy at Lucas' Skywalker ranch in California.

The journalist Bill Moyers was there at the screening, too, and later recalled that Campbell "reveled in the ancient themes and motifs of mythology unfolding on the wide screen in powerful, contemporary images."

Campbell, Moyers remembered, especially exulted aloud in the fact that Lucas had put an up-to-date spin on the timeless hero/quest. ...

..
.. Campbell also loved the Darth Vader character - the dark and evil man in the mask - as a staple of mythology dating back to ancient wall scribblings.

excerpt from article "Sellout: George Lucas in HypeSpace"
by Jon Katz [posted on slashdot.org] -
referring to an interview in book "The Power of Myth"

: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth

Star Wars Trilogy (DVD)
book: The Power of Myth -- by Joseph Campbell

> for an alternative perspective see
Maureen Murdock The Heroine's Journey

related page: myth & story

photo at left: "Skywalker Ranch library, weighted with books on history, geography, and world cultures. This is a working library used to research new film ideas." photo & caption from george.lucas.net

....

I hate endings. Just detest them...

The temptation toward resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment?

The most authentic endings are the ones which are already evolving towards another beginning. That's genius.

"Voice is the nut of [character]. Character is an expression of voice, the emotional tone underneath. . . .

The voices of a lot of external-world characters are inside you. For example, when you write about a nun, it's not your idea of a nun, it's the nun inside you."

photo and quotes from The Sam Shepard Web Site

....books:

Cruising Paradise : Tales***Fool for Love and Other Plays

....

....

I didn't start writing until I was 30 years old. And the thing that's odd about that is that before that, if you could get me to tell you my deepest, darkest secret, my private, foolish dream, I would have told you that I had a sneaking suspicion that I could write.

But truthfully, I was afraid. I was afraid that I couldn't do it, that I wouldn't be good enough, that I would make a fool of myself. I was worried about what people would think of me.

And this brings me to my first big tip: DON'T WORRY ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE WILL THINK OF YOU, because first of all, they're not thinking about you. In all likelihood, they're worried about what you're thinking about them. Anybody who thinks less of you for following a dream isn't worth worrying about anyway.

Callie Khouri - Screenwriter: Thelma & Louise [dvd]; writer/director: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
*****[quotes from Commencement Address - Sweet Briar College, May 22, 1994]

Advice to beginning screenwriters: Read. Take another look at Aristotle's Poetics. (His observations on drama do apply to movies.) ... Spend some time in "virtual film school": As a regular activity, watch videos of movies with the sound turned off. Observe how the story unfolds, note where the editor cuts... What about set dressing? ... What makes a character The Protagonist? How does the writer seduce the viewer into wanting to be represented by this Protagonist?

Robin Swicord****[screenwriter and producer: Practical Magic; Matilda; The Perez Family; Little Women]

from book: Great Women of Film*by Helena Lumme, Mika Manninen

~ ~

[about her photos in the book]*The way women are treated in film noir is insane. I don't at all believe the myth of the femme fatale: black widow types hiding under rocks just waiting to snare men! None of the women I know are like that. It's a very male fantasy. ... I want to write the reverse of noir. I wear 1940s-styled watch and clothes. That's all. But I support [authors Helena and Mika's] vision.. and put myself in their hands. *[from wga.org/WrittenBy article]

I was writing screenplays in Finland. I attended a workshop by Krzysztof Kieslowski six months before he died [writer/director Red, Blue]. He was talking to the film majors of Finland and said, "The best thing to learn about American movies is screenwriting because American screenwriters have perfected the craft. They know how to capture the audience from the very first second."

Kieslowski himself, the most worshipped filmmaker in Europe, had been studying American screenwriters. Everyone was in awe of Kieslowski. When we came here, I took some writing courses at UCLA and heard great writers talking. I thought, Wow, these writers really know something! They know what they're doing! How come they're not famous? How come they're not stars? They should be the stars. It's because of them the American film industry has become so big.

Helena Lumme******[from wga.org/WrittenBy article] - about her book Screenwriters: America's Storytellers in Portrait

note by Emma Thompson to Mary Zimmerman
after seeing her play Metamorphoses:

"You lift the crust of certainties and workaday thoughts from us and replace it with something so soft and clear that I floated out of the theater in a dream and in a kind of bliss. It lasts still."

[Liz Smith column May 31 2002]

~ ~ ~

I hope I've returned to how I was when I was growing up in Nebraska. Willa Cather said, "I'll never be the artist I was as a child." And I really love that idea that.. when you're a child and you don't have much, you're so purely imaginative.

And I like the idea of going back to that aesthetic, you know, to just making things up and making do.

Playwright / Director Mary Zimmerman [pbs.org interview 3.22.02]

Zimmerman credits her Northwestern University professor Frank Galati with giving her a generous world view of theatre.

"I began to understand from him that the truly sophisticated position isn't to dislike things, but to like things. And that the truly sophisticated theatre-goer understands the essential virtue of everything he or she sees.

"Not what's stupid and bad about it. Frank always saw the love and the effort in everything he went to. He could find the affirmation and the joy in the silliest little nothing thing. He could see that it was remaking the world in its own little way." [from performink.com interview May 2000]

*Metamorphoses: A Play by Mary Zimmerman, et al

Although her Native American heritage was pushed into the background during her youth, Glancy still sensed the importance of her roots. She later did her own research and, for a time, moved to Oklahoma and lived near her ancestral land. Growing up, she sensed a repression and a conflict that she suggests in "Jump Kiss."

In one scene, Father says, "How do you forget your voice? How do you fit two worlds together that don't fit? By ignoring the one you are, and going with the other. Forgetting your voice. Forgetting your Indian past."

Her mother, Glancy acknowledges, was repressed as well. "My mother was a very intelligent woman, but she was very stifled as women were in those days," she says. "She had a creative imagination and didn't know what to do with it -- it made her very angry sometimes. But her photographs, that was her outlet I would say."

Then she adds, "My play is a supplement of her photo album. Now it's my turn, I get to say what I want to say."
Diane Glancy - about her play: "Jump Kiss: An Indian Legend"; during the play, three screens project about 300 photographs, which include images of Glancy's family, taken by the playwright's mother. [LA Times June 2, 2002]

books by Diane Glancy: **American Gypsy : Six Native American Plays***Claiming Breath***Firesticks : A Collection of Stories

"Do you really want to write? ***Think about: Why do you write? What drives you? What makes it worthwhile?
I write because I ________ ***Writing my last script was worthwhile because _________
Why don't you write? What hinders you? What are your fears and resistances?
I'm afraid to write because ________******I have trouble getting started because ________

*from book:**Making a Good Writer Great: a Creativity Workbook for Screenwriters by Linda Seger**//**interview:*Linda Seger

The play is simply an attempt to think about the history of Afghanistan, in a very complicated way. It's also about mourning and grieving and loss. And I don't think silence is what we want to ask of artists at a terrible time. ... As with Auschwitz, or the slave ships, there are places where art should only proceed with the greatest caution.

It would be unseemly, in my opinion, to rush into TV movies about Sept. 11. I don't think that sentiment's going to stop anybody, but I'm hoping people will be respectful of the horror ... There's no shortage of feeling these days. But art also has an underrated function of asking people to think, asking people to marry their thought and feeling.

Tony Kushner - referring to his play [in develoment for about two years]: "Homebody/Kabul" which "poses questions on the nature of the West's relationship to Afghanistan and to the Taliban." [LA Times 9.22.01]

book: Tony Kushner in Conversation by Tony Kushner, Robert Vorlicky (Editor)

No one likes rejection. Perhaps the show biz professionals most stung by rejection (besides actors) are writers. It helps to view it like a job search: you'll hear nothing but "no" until someone says "yes".

Your only response to rejection or criticism from agents, producers, contest officials, or other industry types should be polite professionalism. If you disagree, it serves no purpose to argue or attempt to change the verdict.

Remember your prime objective? To establish yourself as a professional writer. This is a collaborative business, populated by people with long memories. Be sure their memory of you is a positive one."

from column:

Handling "No" Like A Pro
by Donie A. Nelson

Josefina Lopez was one of the original graduates of the prestigious Los Angeles County High School of the Arts... one of her drama teachers introduced her to some harsh facts. "She told me I was a very talented actress and had the range to play Juliet or Lady Macbeth or any of the great roles for women, but I would never get to play these parts because I was overweight. It broke my heart. I felt that I should quit fooling myself and just give up."

The summer after she graduated, Lopez did begin working in a dress factory, alongside her sister and her mother. "That's right," she laughs, "I didn't just make that up for the movie. That happened."

She came to the epiphany that she should be a writer. "It seemed logical to me. If there were no roles for large women, I was going to create them, and if there were no roles for Latinas, I was going to write them too. I took everything that was wrong with me and said to myself, How am I going to make this be okay? That's when I started to write the stage play for Real Women Have Curves."

from article: More Latin and Less Greek - When art imitates life, three Latinos and a Greek enter indie heaven - by Julio Martinez (Dec 2002/Jan 2003 issue of "Written By")